Adding a second gateway to my network

I have a VDSL connection from Scarlet, a cheaper provider that is using the infrastructure of Proximus, but it offer some benefits. It is one of the most economical option offering unlimited traffic but only has a download speed of 60Mbps and 10Mbps upload. Fiber internet is still not available where I live so I have to do with the limited speed.

The download speed is most of the time ok, only when downloading very large games it can be a bit annoying, but most of the time we do not notice it, even when a lot of streaming and gaming is going on in the evening.

The biggest limitation is the upload speed. This limits amount of external users we can allow on some of the servers and we need to plan backup and update tasks at night. If I can upgrade to something faster, this will be the reason.

But scarlet has another big advantage: you can find the login and password for your connection on the My Scarlet user portal. I can't use this to completely replace my mode since it is needed for the IPTV receivers, but I can use it to make a seconds connection on my main Mikrotik switch.

My switch was already the DHCP server on the network so I could change the DNS server the clients were using, but the default gateway was still pointing to the modem. This was a bit annoying since I still has to set port forwarding on the modem and I prefer to manage all the config on one place.

So adding a PPPoE connection on my main switch solved that issue. It also allowed me to segment my network and do more extensive routing. After configuring the new PPPoE connection I noticed the modem also just kept connecting to the internet, basically giving me two gateways on my network.

This has some benefits: The IPTV receivers will keep using the gateway on the modem and all other devices got the new gateway from my DHCP server. That would make it possible to block all TV multicast traffic coming from my modem to the rest of the network since the IPTV receivers are directly connected to the modem. Using a DHCP option I can also decide to give certain devices the gateway on the modem and thus also another external IP.

This is ideal when testing how my servers are working using their public IP and DNS records. Before having that possibility I would use the hotspot function on my smartphone to do that kind of testing.

So if you have a router and VDSL connection, have a look on the customer portal of your provider to see if you can find your connection details, you might be surprised how useful that can be even if you also have to keep using the modem provided by your internet provider.